I am indebted to Galeazzo Frudua and to Howard Bashew who contributed
material for this conversation.

Face
it: it isn't easy telling the truth. Now by that, I'm not referring to
"telling the truth" as the opposite of "telling lies". Most of us know
the difference. Most of us know there's a not so fine line between
telling the truth and telling lies - and most of those of us who don't
know the difference soon discover, in the course of life itself,
telling lies doesn't
work
as well as telling the truth (that is, if you're willing to tell the
truth about telling lies). Rather, what I'm referring to is
really telling the truth about what's really
going on with us. Unflinchingly. The idea of telling the
truth about what's really going on with us, in principle, is simple.
But it's not easy.

What I've discovered is the main consideration when telling the
truth about what's really going on with me, is this: what may be
true for me ie what I say is true for me, isn't necessarily
real. I know that's a tough, difficult assertion to confront.
Yet without it, the truth is harder to flesh out; without it, the
truth becomes
slippery
... and both of them conspire to make the truth harder to tell. So
what exactly is the difference between what's true ie between what
we say is true, and what's real?

Two easy examples of truths which aren't real yet are held as if
they're real (which is to say truths blurring the
lines differentiating them from what's real) are: the
tooth fairy, or the thought "They're out to get me". Both the tooth
fairy (if you're of the age when you believe in the tooth fairy)
and the thought "They're out to get me" may be true for you. But
that doesn't mean they're real. That's one of the most
liberating ideas I've gotten from
Werner:
what's true for me, may not be real. Gee! I hope you
get that. Once I could own that, I could relinquish childish
defensiveness and blaming.

Blurring those lines isn't an amoral matter, and
neither is it an unethical matter. It's not a matter
of blurring the lines between doing what's right and
doing what's wrong. Blurring the lines between what's true
and what's real, isn't something we
ordinarily
do with
intent.
It's certainly not something done with sinisterintent.
Rather, it's a phenomenon driven by the
mind
whose logic system is "Everything is the same as
everything else ... except not always" (as
Werner Erhard
may have said). It's unstoppable. It's a
machination
running on full
automatic.

It's just possible that this is
why
telling the truth about what's really going on with us, isn't easy:
because we've got a lot of what's true for us, mixed up with
what's real. And it's a matter of our individual survival
programming / patterning /
automaticity
that we don't allow ourselves to be unattached from what's real -
and so by default we also hang on to what we say is true for us,
giving it way more weight and import than the
story
it ultimately often is (ie the
story
we made up) deserves.

God!
It's more than just a little embarrassing for me to look
back over my life and see how much of what was true for me, I thought
was real - indeed, some of those slo-mo
replays are arduous to
watch.
I've completed them and, the truth is I'm wiser for them. Taking
responsibility for them is what allowed me to grow up.